31 Horrors: Peeping Tom (#23)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

I still have a few of my October viewings left to write up, but Michael Powell's classic Peeping Tom is officially the first of my horror selections to have been screened in November. I ran out of time, but am still wanting to watch the 31. It was inevitable given my late night start times usually resulted in me going "oh, I'll leave that movie that is hailed a masterpiece until another time when I won't have a high chance of falling asleep and, instead, will watch something sillier and lighter." Ya know? Yeah. I still very much anticipate watching Changeling and Don't Look Now, but at the time I felt more like, oh I dunno, Student Bodies instead.

Still, no matter whether I watched it in October or in April, I'd still want to talk about Peeping Tom! More of a thriller than horror - certainly less horror inclined that the film it is frequently linked to, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (yet another instance of my October horror selections having a connection to that particular masterpiece) - it still manages to conjure up an intensely nerve-wracking world that I found entirely captivating. Whether deliberately or not, Peeping Tom embraces an artificial aesthetic that is both glorious to look at and yet a prominent thematic device. The film is, after all, about voyeurism and what better way to subliminally instruct an audience that filmgoing is, essentially, an act of voyeurism than by playing up the cinematic language? Catching audiences off guard with damning themes seems to go down a lot easier when its drawn in bold colours and deliciously constructed imagery.

Known as the first "slasher" film - "Peeping Tom, 1960, directed by Michael Powell. The first movie to ever put the audience in the killer's POV", Scream 4 naturally - and released the same year as Psycho, it's actually quite easy to see how this film caused such a ruckus in Powell's home country of Britain (also Hitchcock's home country, but Psycho was an American production). Presenting England in such a light, especially by one of their own, can't have have endeared him to too many people. The seemingly rather easily replicable nature of the crimes with the increasing popularity of home cameras, too. As a member of the famed Powell & Pressburger team, this was a detour and one that essentially ended his career, which is a particularly cruel fate given the (eventual) rapturous response that Hitchcock's Psycho received. The film was also a very obvious inspiration on the aforementioned Scream franchise (especially number 4), which gets it bonus kudos points from me.

Peeping Tom's biggest hurdle is its lead actor, Karlheinz Böhm. With his breath, somewhat posh, vocal delivery, the character of Mark Lewis is hardly a charismatic one. Of course, he doesn't necessarily have to be. I guess if he were then the scenes wherein we're meant to believe he's coming out of his shell thanks to the inquisitive Helen, played by Anna Massey, wouldn't come off quite as creepy as hell as it does, which was surely Powell's intention. He's a weirdo that most viewers would have had a hard time responding to (much different to Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates) and the acting style that Karlheinz Böhm utilises is occasionally quite distracting in its lack of subtlety.

Still, Peeping Tom doesn't rise or fall simply on the actor's shoulder (and, it must be said that Maxine Audley is super fantastic as the blind mother of Massey's Helen). It's a film deep in rich context that's so wonderfully explained by one Martin Scorsese:

"I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates... From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films."

Furthermore, the character of Mark Lewis frequently alternating between real world and the world as viewed through his camera, it's almost as he really isn't there. Much like Patrick Bateman who used those almost exact words in one of his pre-homicide monologues, Mark seems permanently poised on the verge of disappearing altogether. Swathed in oversized jackets and uncomfortable without his prized camera possession, his meek demeanor only forms flesh and blood when, well, in the presence of somebody else's flesh and blood. Much like Halloween begins from the perspective of Michael Myers before effectively moving onto a permanent otherly plain of existence, Peeping Tom portrays this man as somebody who never really was. He floats about seemingly unnoticed by many, and those who do don't tend to think too highly of him. Years of seeing his predominant male figure pursuing the act of perverse voyeurism has allowed him to slink through life determined to not be the sort of person that anybody would care about.

Peeping Tom is, perhaps more than anything else, a ravishing visual treat. The cinematography of Otto Heller is marvellous and works wonders in bringing a sort of film noir meets technicolour palace to life. The human figures that navigate his frame frequently weave through as Heller's camera glides ever so gracefully around them, cornering them in their own shadows. The confrontation sequence between Mark and the blind Mrs Stephens is a master of this blend of styles and was, for me, the film's greatest moment. Maximum suspense is wrung out of the otherwise innocuous camera that Mark carries around like a comfort blanket. It's spinning gears capturing death intensely and up close makes for a stunning piece of set decoration long before we discover the secret device hidden within it.

There's obvious much more to go into with this movie, but in a more formal way. I'm sure there are plenty of people who've done that and with far more intelligence than I. I was deeply involved by Peeping Tom, and parallels to Psycho aside, found it to be a startlingly original and daring piece of work. It's entirely apt that Michael Powell's career was ruined because of Peeping Tom since he almost seems to be going out of his way to make a film that can very easily be seen as him blasting audiences for their cinematic bloodlust. It's an endlessly fascinating film and one that shan't forget too soon. A

31 Horrors: Hardware (#22)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

Well this was insane and I loved it.

It's hardly surprising to discover that Richard Stanley's 1990 sci-fi/horror action flick received a poor critical reception upon its release. It's a tough film to pin down, seemingly a pastiche of so many different films that it's hard to keep count - post screening my friends and I labelled Blade Runner, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, The Terminator, Alien, Short Circuit, Rear Window, Total Recall, Vertigo, and several more as obvious influences - and yet one that, despite it's mad sloppy screenplay, proved to be an intoxicating winner. It's an exhausting hoot of a film that shows flutters of such astonishing technical finesse that I couldn't help but admire its chutzpah even when it was flapping about like a fish out of water. I loved this movie, perhaps against my better judgement.

Set primarily in one of those futuristic dystopian cities that became so popular in the aftermath of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner where the skies bleed red from nuclear radiation and the cityscapes are dark masses dotted with neon and fluorescent. Hardware begins with the emergence of Dylan McDermott's Moses out of the desert where he has been scavenging for spare parts. Taking some mysterious, but uber-cool, electronics home to his girlfriend who uses these type of foreign objects in her industrial artworks. They live in a world riddled with dirty violence and people are lining up for voluntary sterilisation to reduce population growth. Naturally, the machine from the desert wakes up from its robotic sleep and begins to wreak havoc in exceedingly violent and explosive ways.

I'd never actually heard of this movie before I saw it on a Halloween night double bill with, what else, Halloween at the Astor Theatre. It shares nothing in common with that 1978 classic, so it was a double bill in horror goodness only, but I'm glad I got the chance to see it and to do so on a big screen. The astonishing editing and production design is best experienced on a cinema screen where they merge to form a dizzying collaboration. As the film continues to go higher and higher with its batshit craziness - culminating perhaps in a truly confounding, eye-popping sequence that takes a bit of visual influence from 2001 and Vertigo - I was continued to grow fonder and fonder. Richard Stanley, working from a screenplay (an admittedly odd, muddy one) by Stanley, Steve MacManus, and Kevin O'Neill, never lets up and isn't afraid to go to some truly unexpected places. The gore, too, which rears its head in the final act is certainly a bright and red in a gleeful fashion.

As a visual feast, it ranks alongside Blade Runner, Dark City and The Matrix as dying worlds on life support. It's visually stunning. The claustrophobic one-set nature is obviously derived from Alien, but Stanley is still able to do some interesting, fresh things with it. I admired the performance of Stacey Travis, more the star of the film than McDermott, and found she was able to make the preposterous sequences glisten with genuine emotion, not to mention blood, sweat and tears. Even when it descends into a grotesque Real Window moment of voyeuristic perversion, she keeps the film from spinning off of its axis, something that Stanley clearly had no interest in.

This hallucinogenic, post-apocalyptic, weird, crazy horror extravaganza was a real treat. Evil robots are always fun, but I don't recall seeing anything this flat out bonkers. A movie without blinkers on in its wide-eyed technology-is-evil-yo attitude and that has the balls to really go to some odd places. I loved it! And who can resist a movie in which Iggy Pop features as a radio DJ? A-

31 Horrors: Vampyr (#20)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

Well, it's easy to see why this has been deemed as so influential, isn't it? Per the Eureka! Masters of Cinema DVD sleeve, Carl Theodore Dreyer's Vampyr was deemed by Alfred Hitchcock as "the only film worth watching... twice", Vampyr is seemingly a very obvious inspiration to Psycho. Vampyr, also the inspiration to Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep in a far more obvious way, is about a man who leaves his life and descends into a fantasy horror upon arriving a motel in the middle of nowhere. What is Janet Leigh's Marion Crane is not a fantastical being on the run? Where does she end? A middle of nowhere motel. While Marion met a far crueller fate than Nicolas de Gunzburg's Allan Gray (the film's unofficial subtitle is The Strange Adventure of Allan Gray), Vampyr too descends into a mystery-solving horror ala Psycho, just with vampires instead of mummy-dressing psychotics. The similarities don't quite end there, however, as Hitchcock appears to have aped several slices of striking imagery too.

Vampyr is the first sound feature that Dreyer ever made, coming on the heels of The Passion of Joan of Arc. Having said that, Dreyer has stuck to a silent aesthetic for the most part and there is minimal dialogue as a result of the producer's wish to record the film in both French and Germany languages. Title cards are frequently used and many of the actors - unprofessional actors for the most part I've since discovered - work more in sinister glances than horrific speeches. Dreyer, too, uses static imagery more than the theatrical horrors of his international brethren. Vampyr's release was actually delayed in Germany so that Dracula and Frankenstein could be released first, certainly one of the earliest sign posts of the international film world working with a domino effect.

At only 72 minutes, Vampyr doesn't exactly dig deep into the vamp mythology, but it does manage to craft an excessively eerie atmosphere. As Allan Gray attempts to solve and break the vampire curse that has swept across his village without succumbing to it himself, Dreyer infuses it with enough images of wrinkled, doom-ravaged faces and sickle-wielding townsfolk to power several films. It's holds an incredible power, a spell if you will, that doesn't break until it's over. A bewitching and altogether stunning piece of brilliantly crafted cinema. A-

31 Horrors: Sssssss (#8)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

Let's ignore the, quite frankly, ridiculous title of this 1973 killer snake flick Sssssss (also known as Ssssnake in the UK), and move on to the fact that, ya know, it's actually kinda good!

The film begins with a warning label slash thank you card to the cast and crew, stating that the animals used in the making of Sssssss were not defanged and that the people involved in the production genuinely put their lives on the line to make it. "It" being a film that was one of the last films ever made specifically for a double feature - it played alongside The Boy Who Cried Werewolf - which is a nifty lil fact to know. As I watched it I actually thought the movie had the visual aesthetic of a TV movie. It was directed by Bernard L. Kowalski, whose previous film was indeed a TV one, and it shows, although he definitely amped it up with the lovely use of widescreen. Still, it has a pale wash over it that lacks a certain cinematic quality, and yet one that befits a film of this kind.

Anyway, I'm getting a bit sidetracked. I really enjoyed Sssssss! I had trepidations to watch it, after discovering it hidden amongst my flatmate's DVD collection, as snakes give me the willies. Oh sure, they're not quite as bad as, say, the spiders in Arachnophobia, but they're still creepy. There's a disturbing nature to the creatures, and seeing the flaky, scaly flesh of these reptiles meant I have no trouble believing the filmmakers' claims that they're the real deal is true and not some made up wannabe urban legend that they invented for notoriety sake.

Written by Hal Dresner and Daniel C. Striepeke, Sssssss does a good job of setting up the mechanics of a "killer snake" movie without merely relying on - oh, I dunno - a truck transporting a collection of deadly snakes overturning, unleashing the hissing horror upon a small town of unsuspecting victims. Strother Martin is quite deliciously sinister as snake expert Dr Carl Stoner and Dirk Benedict is also surprisingly fine as his milquetoast assistant/experiment subject. I particularly enjoyed Heather Menzies, too, whose Diane Keaton shag revealed a shoulda been scream queen (she also made Piranha, but that's about it as far as Menzies and genre fare go). Knowing she was one of the Von Trapp kids in The Sound of Music just adds to my fondness for her performance. She's especially impressive in the film's final 30 minutes.

And, look, can I mention this? Yes, of course I can. You've come to expect it, haven't you?

Yes, that Dirk Benedict was quite a good looking man back in the day. He wasn't cast as "the faceman" on The A-Team for his brain. That last shot is a from a skinny dipping scene that was presumably to feature more nudity that it eventually did. It's quite obvious throughout the scene that some particularly fake-looking foliage had been superimposed over the image of Benedict and Menzies' bare bottoms. Bless 'em. Shame though, amiright?

What I didn't expect from Sssssss, however, was that about half way in it would become a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho! In a turn of narrative events that had me guffawing (at 1.30am, mind you!), several nods to the masterful 1960 film become obvious. No more so, of course, than this film's own rendition of the famed shower scene that sees Strother Martin's character, initially a protagonist until his obvious evil deeds became known, enter the bathroom of a character and sets a black mamba snake into it behind the curtain. A flurry of edited reaction shots later and the Doctor takes back and snake and exits the bathroom, and the apartment, leaving the victim to collapse onto the bathroom floor, dead. Hello! It certainly helps that the victim is the incredibly good looking cult beefcake Reb Brown. What's that you say? Screencaps... oh sure!




















There's more, but none quite as overt as that shower scene. Even the music attempts to bring back memories of Hitch. It's a strange scene for sure, but one that made many innocuous moments thereafter look like sly references. Unrelated to Psycho, but there was even a scene with echoes of Saw a whole 30 years prior to that movie's inception!

So, yes, I was quite impressed with Sssssss. Despite its flaws (1970s transitional visual effects do not look good, you guys!), it ends up a rather effective chiller that doesn't necessarily play in to the regular tropes of the killer animal genre. I mean, how many movies do you know feature a final sequence where in a king cobra snake and a mongoose fight it out to the death before an ambiguous ending on the protagonist's fate? Not many I presume. B

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 7 of Scream 3 (0:21:56-0:27:36)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 7 of Scream 3
Length: 5mins 40secs
Primary Characters: Sarah Darling, Roman Bridges (voice), Tyson Fox and Ghostface
Pop Culture References:

• Psycho and Vertigo (Sarah gets these two Hitchcock films confused)
• Scream 2 (Sarah is an obvious play on Sarah Michelle Gellar from Scream 2 and references to the making of Scream 2 are included)

I hope they change these establishing shots up!

I've long held the belief that Scream 3 can be read as a spoof of its own franchise. What better way to continue mocking the horror genre than to mock your own series of films that revitalised the very genre you were mocking in the first place?! It's moments like this that make me believe I'm right in a way. There's no reason for the filmmakers to throw in a scene of Sarah here being spooked by a mysterious noise in the middle of broad daylight, there's just not, and yet they have it there. The filmmakers just decided to turn their own frachise's MO up to 11 and put every single cliche in there, even when it was completely unnecessary.

"Stab 3. Jesus, I gotta get a new agent."
So, we come to the second chase sequence of the movie. Scream 3 slicks closer to the Scream blueprint here with scene 7 here coming at exactly the same time in proceedings as it did in the original, unlike Scream 2 that featured far more talk and didn't get around to "the chick who gets killed second" until the 29 minute mark of scene 9.

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it, the cinematography of the Scream franchise is always really wonderfully framed. Always used in a great way to get the viewer into the space of a scene. Think of the way Drew Barrymore looked standing in front of those big glass patio doors or the way the above-angle shots of Randy in the park provided that sense of menace. I always like how characters are framed to show any manner of places in which the killer could be hiding. Like in this shot, for instance, we have an open door right in front of Sarah or the long passageway with doors opening up on either side into rooms that could easily hide the killer. He could quite literally be anywhere.

After working on Scream 3, cinematographer Peter Deming went and made Mulholland Drive with David Lynch, which worked the LA movie world in a far different, but even scarier, manner.

"Fuck you very much."
Why didn't this catchphrase, er, catch on? Oh, that's right... it's stupid. Although, in 2011 that line probably sounds like poetry to some people.

So, I see headshots for "Jennifer Jolie", "Cotton Weary", "Tyson Fox", "Sarah Darling" and "Tom Prinze". The one for Cotton is obviously a prop since there's no way that would actually be Liev Schreiber's headshot, but the others all look legitimate and real. Do you reckon they are? Who are the others, too? Scream 3 extras? Crew who got headshots taken as a joke and used in the movie as set decoration?

Okay, so, when I went to go see Shark Night 3D I inadvertently witnessed the trailer for that new Adam Sandler movie Jack & Jill. It looks really bad. Really, really bad. There's one bit where Sandler, dressed as a woman for some reason, kicks a football (or something - I am not going to YouTube to watch it and find out exactly) and it hits Al Pacino's Oscar, which then shatters into hundreds of little pieces. I don't think Academy Awards are that fragile, to be honest. Same goes for this award, whatever it is. What is this trophy made of if it falls apart the moment it gets dropped on the ground. I'm surprised it made it out of the ceremony unharmed if that's the case (especially given some of the stories we hear about award show after parties!)

"Since I've got you on the phone, let's talk about your character."
"What character? I'm Candy, the chick who gets killed second, I'm only in two scenes."
The meta is off the chart! Jenny McCarthy who is only in two scenes of Scream 3 and gets killed second (third technically, but second death scene) playing a character in Stab 3 who is in only two scenes and gets killed second who is obviously modeled on the actress who was only in two scenes of Scream 2 and got killed second (third technically, but second death scene).

Wait, what?

"Ring ring. Hello."
"Hello."
"Who is this?"
"Who's this?"
"It's Candy. Hang on, let me put on some clothes."
Hah. Amazing. I adore the way she says "ring ring" for some peculiar reason.

"I don't understand why I have to start the scene in the shower. The whole shower thing's been done; Vertigo, hello!"
Oh Candy. I actually like Jenny McCarthy in Scream 3. She's obviously playing off of her own dumb blonde routine - but future movies like, say, Dirty Love, prove she may be aware of her image but not willing to do anything about it - and I think she looks great, too, I just have a bit of an issue with the behind the scenes metamorphosis of her character. The story goes that Sarah Michelle Gellar was a bit too hands on for Wes Craven's liking and spend much of her time on set giving Wes "ideas" for how her scene could play out. Having worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer had apparently given her ideas on stunts and the like. Craven was probably glad she got cast as CiCi and not someone who got to stick around longer.

So, apparently Sarah Darling is highly influenced by Sarah Michelle Gellar and makes me wonder what Smidge thought of Scream 3 if she ever did see it.

"Candy. Is that like candy cane or candy apple?"
"Come on, who is this? I think you have the wrong number."
"But you know my favourite name?"
"I'm hanging up right now."
"It's Sarah."
"Roman, that's not the line."
"It is in my script."

"Has there been another god-damned rewrite? How the fuck are we supposed to learn our lines when there's a new script every 15 minutes?"

"It's not just a new script, it's a new movie."
"What? What movie?"
"My movie..."
*click*
"... And it's called Sarah Gets Skewered Like a Fucking Pig."

"Still in character... Sarah?"
Okay, so, a few things about this exchange: